Content Shock Meets Community ShockBuilding on Mark Schaefer's brilliant Content Shock ideas the next web marketing tsunami will be Community Shock. Community Shock is when adding one more member DEPRESSES instead of LIFTS a site's ROI (because cost of acquiring new members became unsustainably high due to intense competition).

Medium Cool Why do we need another blogging tool? Reasonable question. If Medium was simply and only another micro-blogging and content curation tool then the answer would be in the negative.

We don’t need another blogging tool no matter how cool, efficient and mobile-ready the new tool’s User Interface. That’s why Medium isn’t a micro-blogging tool. Medium is a community forming NOW and that has many benefits including:

Do you often wake up in the middle of the night saying to yourself that it’s not worth the time and effort. We all do.

Blogs take time to write, those great images need to be found or created and those social networks meed to be managed and nurtured. It is often not done or persisted with because there are no apparent quick rewards. This is where the tortoise can beat the hare by slowly persisting. It is a marathon and a journey not a sprint.

One way of thinking about great content marketing is that you are building an audience before you need them. Content builds credibility, trust and followers over time. This earns you the right to then sell them something down the track.

When content marketing and social media emerged there were no tools. Today we have so many technology tools that it’s overwhelming.

But what is great with marketing tools is that you can scale your efforts. It was something I realized with Twitter early on. A few years ago I implemented one software platform that saved me 120 hours a month and it still does.

So what are some content marketing mistakes that many amateurs new to the game are making.

Everything Is Harder Suddenly everything online seems harder. Or there may be a slow drip with energy and value leaking out seemingly unrecoverable. Google’s algorithmic haircuts hurt no matter how realization dawns. This post is about how to recover, regain and reposition your website after traffic, conversions and money are dealt an injury by an algorithm change by the Google Gods.

Follow these 5 Easy Steps to Recover:

Stop, Wait & Listen.

Analytics Deep Dive.

Create New KPIs.

Back In To Blue Oceans.

Create Community.

Possibly "easy" is the wrong word (lol). First STOP whatever you've been doing since "old SEO" tactics don't work anymore. Next figure out where to go that new and start testing. This Curagami post shares several Haiku Decks and explains each of those 5 "Recovery" tips.

Does your website have game? It is going to because gamification and games are how you win hearts, minds and loyalty over time online. This Curagami post welcomes SweetToothRewards.com, a new add-on to Magento, Shopify and others, and affordable gamification. Gamification is in your website's future because its benefits win hearts, minds and loyalty over time and help create sustainable online community.

This original research by Internet Retailer offers insights into whats driving growth in sales conversion among Americas leading web merchants.

Marty NoteListening to David Payton discuss the cool conversion report FedEx created with Internet Retailer:

1. Free Shipping = top way to convert visitors to buyers. Some will even opt for a slower time for free shipping. Some want ship to store. Free shipping is "essential" said VP Marketing David Payton at SMB Conference today.

2. Responsive = device agnostic. The ability to see the site and have the site function across platforms is key. Company in David's slide deck saw a 40% increase in conversion from responsive design.

3. Email Marketing Still MattersDavid's and FedEx's study shows email is still very important. Persoans and personalizing emails is key. No more batch and blast.

Easy Marketing TrickWant to increase traffic to your blog without spending any money? Use JetPack's mobile icon to add an icon for your blog on your phone AND share with your customers so they have a quick link from their phones to your blog.

While Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao were duking it out on Saturday, another battle was going on in the background: Periscope versus illegal live-stream...

Marty NoteK, let me see if I have this right. I pay $100K to watch a mediocre fight and the venue is going to tell me I can't @Periscope it (real time video streaming). WHAT?

Boxing needs to learn the music business lesson - try to deny or sue the future out of existence and YOU lose long term not them. Periscope is on the side of the angels. We #contentcurators are GOING to create content with their very cool tool.

Whether we will keep watching BOXING is the question.

And NO would be my answer unless we can create a tribe as we watch. If boxing's promoters want to KILL their golden goose they won't be the first. Instead of being happy they created an event people felt compelled to share and embracing the share and helping (the share) boxing wants to put genie back in bottle.

Yeah, good luck with that. I love it when ostrich-like industries like this one wrongly believe their CONTENT is what creates the primary value. HUBRIS goes before a monster fall in our business - web marketing - and it doesn't get much more arrogant than believing we HAVE to have a fight.

NO, we HAVE TO HAVE the connections such an event creates, so if you don't like it then find a way to support it or MAKE LESS MONEY and watch your relevance slowly decay to the point where NO ONE CARES because we can't share the expression of that care or see that our friends do too.

Lesson to boxing AND ALL OTHERS - we WILL curate your content and the proper response is. "WOW, that's great how can we help". Any other response and YOU LOSE. Sue and YOU LOSE FASTER and WORSE.

I wanted to watch the fight, but I'm not paying 100 bucks and I'm not going to a smoky bar with a bunch of drunk a-holes I don't know. So boxing's message to me is F-Off. My message back to boxing is I love Periscope WAY MORE THAN YOU. If you force me to choose that decision is easy...and YOU LOSE.

Never ceases to amaze me how really STUPID people believe they are capable of turning back the tide. Yeah, not so much just ask the music industry that goes from your money for nothing and chicks for free to WHO CARES or if it isn't free WHO CARES.

Ask those bands trying to pay for the sins of previous greedy generations if they wished the industry "leaders" knew a little bit more about what I do for a living (web marketing) and a little less about being huge a-holes (lol). Bet they vote for more of one and a lot less of the other. M

PS. May seem strange to say boxing is dead on its biggest $$ night ever, but that is precisely when businesses die lately. When they are so full of themselves they don't see the train that has in fact already hit them.

Make no mistake: marketing automation is a nice next step in marketing with many channels unified in one platform, but to make it all run efficiently and correctly can be a daunting task. Be sure to have all departments involved lined up and aware of all the goals, challenges and possibilities before diving in.

What is a listicle? It is a post arranged in a list format, and each point is supported with a relevant (and quirky) image or GIF to keep readers engaged. So if you find a post titled something like ‘15 Things Every Woman Should Do Before She Turns 25’, you are looking at a listicle.

Just like America’s fascination with twerking, many people had predicted that the booming popularity of listicles was just a passing fad. Contrary to the prophecy, use of listicles have expanded so much so that they are now being touted as the “new face of content marketing”.

Martin (Marty) Smith's insight:

Agree, lists make for powerful content marketing. We like List.ly where our 13 lists have generated over 6,000 views. Lists rock SEO too, so lists make for double dangerous content marketing.

Biggest disagreement is defining Amazon as a "e-retailing pure play". That is nonsense. Amazon is an INFORMATION pure play and they are agnostic about where information takes them. Professor Galloway is going against trend here.

Are we really all going to start piling in our cars and buying on our phones to ship to store? Maybe and I like his Best Buy example, but Amazon can zero out any advantage bricks and clicks brings in about a day.

As I noted in the post, we all can. There is so much SPACE out there waiting for stores we could start up a multi-point store system in a matter of days. We don't see bricks as the distinct advantage Scott does. Not by a long shot.

We see the world moving to digital goods and away from hard goods. That doesn't bode well for anyone NOT in the information business. Galloway even notes Amazon functions as a search engine as much as an e-retailer. That advantage doesn't erode fast. He needs to see my pagespread chart showing Amazon with millions of pages indexed vs. next closest competitor (Apple).

His points about mobile, search and Google feel correct. Search is changing and he gets one of the forces right - appification. Apps = search less, so appying up is a good idea. Run out and open 100 stores? Not so much, at least not unless the Renaissance Galloway preaches looks like a reality.

Are you looking to boost leads on your real estate website? If yes, this blog is the most readable for you as it contains 6 highly effective ways to generate more leads on your real estate website. Check-out this blog and share your views.

Welcome to the 6th in the Monday Marketing Masters series, bringing you my take on the best of the best marketing and branding strategies out there today. Still chugging! I was watching a TED talk today on a topic only a geek like myself would be attracted to, I thought…until, it occurred to me that, […]

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.